Grow Your Skills to Grow Your Practice

Short cuts. We all want success, but some of us want to get there by taking the hidden trail, the one that doesn’t require any special gear or skills to cross.  True professional improvement requires STRETCHING beyond your current skills. When you grow your knowledge you grow your possibilities.

In my experience, lazy people want to take short cuts. They want someone to tell them exactly what to do so that they don’t have to expend any brainpower figuring it out. I’m here to tell you that anything worth acquiring requires an investment in your skills before you can enjoy success.

TELL ME WHAT TO DO

Imagine if you will that you want to increase your revenue 20% in 2013. You want to do this by attracting more affluent women clients. So you hire a consultant who tells you to rebrand, do this and do that.

The consultant makes sure all the right words are in your web copy and ensures that images of women in various life stages are sprinkled throughout your website. This is so that you can attract wealthier women clients.

You’re pretty happy with yourself. You don’t personally have to do anything but sit back and wait for the phone to ring. You don’t have to take any special courses, read any special books, or improve in any way.

MARS AND VENUS

Your first new woman prospect comes into the office for a one-on-one meeting with you. The only trouble is you hired a consultant who did all the work for you. You don’t have the first clue about what women go through when they work with a financial planner.  You don’t understand why this woman wants to hire a new financial planner. You don’t understand the skills she is looking for in a financial advisor. After ten minutes with you, your prospect is of the opinion that you are from Mars and she is from Venus.  Goodbye.

ROADMAP

Truly great financial firm leaders evolve and learn from their mistakes. They GROW not only their business but themselves. They are ambitious. They realize that to attract better quality clients they have to be better quality financial planners in some way either through skill building or personality building.

Affluent women clients didn’t become affluent by avoiding personal and professional growth. They are frequent travelers, are well-educated, interested in the arts and philanthropy, and are early adopters when it comes to technology. They appreciate the finer things in life and look for an advisor who is well-rounded, well-read and cultured.

Here are a few tips to grow your practice and your skills in 2013 so that you can improve your quality of life:

Decide what you want to ACCOMPLISH this year. Do you want to grow your firm? What income level would make you very happy? What income level could support you in having the right team for your practice? Write it down.

Decide what needs to CHANGE. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  What are you going to CHANGE this year? What massive action are you going to implement?

Decide where you need to INVEST.  What skills could you improve? Here are just a few possibilities:
Public speaking – nothing helps improve confidence more than speaking in front of others.
Travel – where could you go to improve your knowledge of the world?
Critical thinking – learn how to sift through information logically and form opinions.
Writing – being able to write well is crucial for your inbound marketing strategies. Many of my clients have pin-pointed improving their writing as the mark of delineation to changing their lives for the better.
Rapport building – how are your people skills? Do you walk into a room and seek out new friends to shake hands with?
Listening skills – financial planners should listen 80% of the time and speak only to ask questions that improve rapport building. Could you listen more?
Investment knowledge – do you know enough about options available for your affluent clients? Where could you improve?
Leadership – do your employees look up to you? Do you mentor and encourage your team?
Office décor – is your office decorating dated? Is your conference room set up for adversarial sparing rather than collaboration?

What about you? Tell me what you plan to do this year to grow your skills and your business. What do you want to achieve? The sky is the limit and you are capable of great things. What you can imagine you can achieve.

To learn more about growing your skills to grow your practice, request a consultation.